Recently in Public Order Category

The DNC chair got the ax when hacked emails definitively proved what just about everyone paying attention pretty much knew -- that she was using the party apparatus to favor one primary candidate over the other. We didn't think it warranted mention on this blog.

But who is the substitute convention opener? It is none other than the notorious Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the one who said as her city was burning:

It's a very delicate balancing act because while we try to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well, and we work very hard to keep that balance and to put ourselves in the best position to de-escalate.

She quickly blamed others for supposedly mischaracterizing her words, saying she did not mean what she plainly said.

One foolish statement would not have been so bad if she had followed up by doing everything right after that, but the City of Baltimore has not. Closer to the opposite, and it has the crime to prove it.

If the Democratic Party wanted to make this election all about who is on the criminals' side and who is on the law-abiding people's side, with themselves being the wrong side, it could hardly have chosen a more effective face to put forward to open its convention.

And just to be very, very clear, there is no balance to be struck with free speech when a full-blown riot is in progress. Government can constitutionally put "time, place, and manner" limits on speech to serve important interests, and peaceful protests can be postponed until peace is restored.

Overall crime in Las Vegas spiked by 22 percent this year, with homicides up by over 60 percent, sexual assaults up by nine percent and robberies up by 21 percent. And what does the sheriff think is the reason behind this? CBS reports:

The sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department claimed a
number of crimes that happened in Sin City have been traced back to
Californian[s].

Sheriff Joe Lombardo blamed AB 109, which allows for early release of
certain inmates, and Proposition 47, which reduces nonviolent crimes to
misdemeanors.

"Individuals we're able to identify, and also the victims of those
crimes - we're seeing a significant increase in individuals that have
gang affiliation, gang association directly related to California,"
Lombardo said.

Los Angeles' city attorney expressed skepticism in how Lombardo made a connection between the Las Vegas crime spike and California's laws. Still, it is telling, even if Lombardo's theory is falsely perceived, that because AB 109 and Prop. 47 are such bad policies, neighboring states believe they are reaping the negative consequences of them as well.

Whether or not there is anything to Sheriff Lombardo's reasoning remains to be seen.

Personally, I have little use for people who protest by occupying property that is not theirs and has nothing to do with the dispute. That goes for the Occupy movement of a few years ago, the current protest, and all the way back to the Vietnam War when protesting students staged sit-ins at campus facilities that had nothing to do with the war.

The sit-ins at segregated lunch counters during the civil rights movement were different. The lunch counter operators were perpetrators of the injustice at issue.

The main beef of the current occupiers is the violation of their constitutional right to graze cattle on land that does not belong to them without paying fees to the owner of the land, i.e., the federal government. I don't recall reading that in the Constitution, but maybe it's part of the "living document."

One of the interesting (and in my view, curious) aspects of the battle over sentencing reform is that conservatives are split (e.g., Sen. Grassley on one side and Sen. Sessions on the other).

The split has reflected itself in major conservative websites, with Breitbart opposing reform and Redstate supporting it.

I do not generally read either site (I look at more conventional sources like the WSJ, Commentary and the Weekly Standard, among other publications), Nonetheless, when Breitbart called to interview me, I was happy to talk to them, as I will do with the great majority of media, liberal or conservative. Breitbart's article is here, written by Ms. Katie McHugh. The more libertarian-leaning Redstate responded, with a less than flattering assessment of my remarks as reported by Breitbart.

For conservatives who might be leaning Redstate's way, I want to provide at least the sketch of a reply.

Heather MacDonald has this op-ed in the WSJ, subtitled "Amid the escalation of violent crime are signs of a breakdown of basic respect for law enforcement."

After two decades of the most remarkable crime drop in U.S. history,
law enforcement has come to this: "I'm deliberately not getting involved
in things I would have in the 1990s and 2000s," an emergency-services
officer in New York City tells me. "I won't get out of my car for a
reasonable-suspicion stop; I will if there's a violent felony committed
in my presence."

A virulent antipolice campaign over the past
year--initially fueled by a since-discredited narrative about a police
shooting in Ferguson, Mo.--has made police officers reluctant to do their
jobs. The Black Lives Matter movement proclaims that the police are a
lethal threat to blacks and that the criminal-justice system is pervaded
by racial bias. The media amplify that message on an almost daily
basis. Officers now worry about becoming the latest racist cop of the
week, losing their job or being indicted if a good-faith encounter with a
suspect goes awry or is merely distorted by an incomplete cellphone
video.

With police so discouraged, violent crime has surged in at
least 35 American cities this year. The alarming murder increase
prompted an emergency meeting of the Major Cities Chiefs Association
last month. Homicides were up 76% in Milwaukee, 60% in St. Louis, and
56% in Baltimore through mid-August, compared with the same period in
2014; murder was up 47% in Minneapolis and 36% in Houston through
mid-July.

Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier's take on the current crime spree is that murder victims and suspects have in common previous run-ins with the law. Twenty-one of the homicide arrestees, she reported, were under supervision pending trial or on probation or parole at the time of the crime. Twenty-six of the murder victims were under court supervision. Ten individuals involved in homicides this year had previous homicide charges but were back on the streets. Six homicide victims had prior murder charges, she said. And almost half, or 45 percent, of the homicide arrestees had prior gun-related arrests.

So let's be clear about this. Up to 31 human beings, most or all of them African American, are dead because their killers, who could have been in prison if we were more serious, were back on the street.

Do black lives matter?

As you might expect, the news doesn't get any better when we turn our attention to the city's juvenile justice system -- a system whose intentional laxity certainly seems to promote violence.

William Sousa has an article in the City Journal with the above title, subtitled, A response to Broken Windows critic Bernard Harcourt. Sousa is the co-author, with George Kelling, of an NYPD research report on the efficacy of Broken Windows policing.

For the better part of two decades, Columbia University law professor Bernard Harcourt has been on a personal crusade against Broken Windows policing, criticizing both its theoretical underpinnings and its policy applications. A close look at Harcourt's work, however, reveals not only the weaknesses of his arguments but also his lack of attention to other research findings that conflict with his own. His portrayal of Broken Windows policing, it turns out, is fundamentally inaccurate and incomplete. In effect, Harcourt creates and then fights a paper tiger.

By way of background, Broken Windows is a policing tactic that emphasizes the police management of minor offenses. The authors of the Broken Windows hypothesis--George L. Kelling and the late James Q. Wilson--always maintained that Broken Windows policing should encourage proper discretion on the part of officers. Kelling in particular has discussed the importance of discretion when it comes to maintaining order, as in a recent article in Politico, where he indicates that arrest should be the last option when managing minor offenses.

The misrepresentation of Broken Windows policing as "zero tolerance" policing, encouraging arrests for minor offenses, is an important element of the campaign against it. When you can't win with the truth, you have to make stuff up.

James Panero has this article in the City Journal with the above title. It is subtitled "The de Blasio administration has all the wrong answers on the homeless mentally ill."

For New Yorkers who remember the bad old days, the recent reminders of an era when urban pathologies ruled the streets can be jarring. Back when times were tough, residents of my neighborhood on the Upper West Side passed by abandoned graffiti-covered lots, crunched red-capped crack vials under their feet, and worried about when Larry Hogue, the "Wild Man of 96th Street," would make his next appearance. Now some of this sense of foreboding seems to be coming back.

The makings of a riot had come together Saturday night in light of the acquittal of a Cleveland policeman on charges of voluntary manslaughter. Some violence had already begun, as I noted here.

But this time, there was a difference. Because protection of citizens is apparently taken more seriously in Cleveland than in Baltimore, the police did not retreat. Instead, they were at the ready. Paul Mirengoff has the story:

Cleveland police were taking no chances in the wake of the acquittal of police officer Michael Brelo, going to great lengths to ensure that Saturday afternoon's peaceful protests didn't evolve into violent riots like Baltimore and Ferguson have experienced in recent months.

In addition to having the National Guard on standby, police followed protesters through the streets and arrested anyone who acted violently or refused to obey police orders to disperse. A total of 71 people were arrested. . . .

Richard Brawn of Petaluma, California has a Letter to the Editor in today's WSJ, with the above caption, that I will simply copy in its entirety:

Regarding the article "Texas Housing Case Tests Civil-Rights Doctrine" (page one, Jan. 21), the mischief maker in this case is the same one that perpetuates misery in public housing: Congress. I spent 13 years working in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The two issues perpetually facing HUD were how to get the beneficiaries of public housing to accept personal and community responsibility, and how to convince the apologists and facilitators to stop putting their dogma ahead of getting the needy housed. While I was at HUD, a South African low-income-housing management firm presented to the San Francisco office how it had eliminated crime and misery in its buildings: Management strictly enforced rules and used video in the hallways and fingerprint security locks on building front doors, and required participation by the beneficiaries in maintaining the appearance of the building and surroundings. The firm reported that crime was virtually nonexistent and that residents viewed rules and security systems not as an invasion of human dignity but as critical to residents' well-being. In America, Congress has consistently prevented HUD from doing what it takes to get maximum housing for funds allocated and to get the misery makers out of public housing.

Race is morally irrelevant and in a correctly functioning world would be legally irrelevant. But that is not the world we live in, and discussing race on a criminal law blog has become, unfortunately from my point of view, inescapable.

The reason they've tanked under the President's grievance-pumping Administration isn't hard to figure out. The flashpoint was the Ferguson riot. To say the least, things have not improved since. Here's a start on the explanation:

Obama "assured" NPR that the issue of mistrust between police and minority communities isn't new. He claimed, though, that it hasn't been widely discussed until now, and that the current discussion is "probably healthy."

But the problem that has surfaced under Obama isn't "discussion" of police-community relations. The problem is race rioting and violence against the police.

The Ferguson rioting; the chants calling for "dead cops" now; the assassination and attempted assassination of police officers; the reluctance, or even the refusal, of the police to respond promptly to calls for help -- these are phenomena we haven't witnessed since the 1970s.

These phenomena aren't "discussions,"and they certainly aren't "healthy." They are evidence of a deterioration in race relations and signs of a breakdown in society.

On August 9 this last summer, police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, a 6'4" 292 pound unarmed 18 year-old who had just forcibly robbed a convenience store of some trivial items.

From that day to this, there has been a media and cultural war on the police. They are, we are variously told, racist, thuggish, unaccountable and over-militarized. You will have missed it only if you've been living in a cave. C&C has covered it extensively.

Wars have casualties. Today we heard about some in the Washington Examiner. Its story is headlined, "Police deaths soar 24% in 2014 with ambush attacks leading cause." It starts:

The NLEOMF report said 126 federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial officers were killed in the line of duty this year, compared to 102 in 2013. The number of officers killed by firearms in 2014 -- 50 -- is up 56 percent from the 32 killed last year.

Fifteen officers nationwide were killed in ambush assaults in 2014, and the recent shooting deaths of New York City Police Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos have attracted national attention and contributed to tension between police and the city's elected leaders.

The total of 15 ambush assaults matched 2012 for the highest total since 1995.

The hate war against the police is not directly responsible for most, or perhaps any, of this. At the same time, those insisting that hate has no consequences are lying to themselves and to us.

Mary Kissel at the WSJ interviews "Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow George Kelling on his famous theory of policing and how it's fared in practice."

Despite the title and subhead, Kelling's first point is that "Broken Windows" is about more than policing.

Here's the theory in a nutshell. If a window is broken in a neighborhood and no one fixes it, it's a sign to all that nobody cares. People prone to vandalism become more bold, while people who would like to keep the neighborhood up become more likely to take a "why bother?" attitude. Things spiral downward, ultimately increasing major problems, including crime.

Taking care of problems that some people regard as petty actually does matter a lot.

Dr. Kelling, BTW, is a long time friend and advisor of CJLF, as was his co-author, the late James Q. Wilson

Eugene Volokh has this post at his eponymous conspiracy on a bizarre incident at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Dr. Mireille Miller-Young -- an associate professor with UCSB's Feminist Studies Department -- was offended by an anti-abortion demonstration with graphic images. (CJLF takes no position on the underlying controversy, BTW.)

Miller-Young said that she "just grabbed it [the sign] from this girl's hands." Asked if there had been a struggle,
Miller-Young stated, "I'm stronger so I was able to take the poster."

Miller-Young said that the poster had been taken back to her office. Once in her office, a "safe space" described by Miller-Young,
Miller-Young said that they were still upset by the images on the
poster and had destroyed it. Miller-Young said that she was "mainly"
responsible for the posters destruction because she was the only one
with scissors.

The definition of robbery in California, unchanged since 1872, is "the felonious taking of personal property in the possession of another, from his person or immediate presence, and against his will, accomplished by means of force or fear." (Penal Code § 211.)

Miller-Young confessed to taking the property, and the "I'm stronger" statement effectively confesses the "force" element. (See 2 Witkin & Epstein, California Criminal Law, Crimes Against Property § 99.) This is not only a felony, but a "violent" one. (Penal Code § 667.5(c)(9).)

"Miller-Young said that she did not feel that what she had done was criminal."

In my view, one of the greatest problems in our society today is the extent to which our young people are being taught by persons utterly devoid of common sense. Miller-Young should be convicted of robbery. Whatever direct consequences the court may impose, the collateral consequence should be that she is fired and never teaches in this state (or hopefully any other) again.